Just days before a runoff election in the 2019 Louisiana gubernatorial race, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards sat down with New Orleans rapper Dee-1 on November 13 to talk about several crucial issues that are effecting Louisiana citizens across the state.
“It doesn’t do any good to deny that we have our share of challenges, whether it’s multigenerational poverty, poor educational outcomes, poor health outcomes, so those are the things that we have to focus on,” said Gov. Edwards. “It is all about opportunity and prosperity so that people can have a better life here in Louisiana.”
On education, Gov. Edwards said that a major point of emphasis during his term in office has been investing in teachers and early childhood education. Specifically, Gov. Edwards spoke about de-emphasizing teachers teaching to standardized tests and, instead, giving them more freedom to teach to the needs of the children in their classroom.
“Teachers are so important. It is one of the noblest professions we have, and it is also one of the most underpaid,” he said. “I am absolutely convinced that the best thing we can do to get rid of our achievement gaps in education and have better educational outcomes for everybody is to have more of our young children between age zero and three in quality early childhood education programs so they start school ready to learn.”
Another major focus of the conversation was criminal justice reform. According to Gov. Edwards, Louisiana had the highest incarceration rate in the country when he first took office in 2016.
“In 2017, I signed into law 10 bills, the most comprehensive criminal justice effort ever in our state and probably the most comprehensive ever in the country,” he said. “I signed those bills into law, and we no longer have the nation’s highest incarceration rate.”
Since those 10 bills were enacted, Louisiana has saved $30 million and reinvested more than two-thirds of that into the Department of Corrections to help improve the reentry process, improve victim assistance, and reduce recidivism rates.
“The criminal justice reform has made us safer. We know that because the FBI crime report for 2018 came out about a month ago,” he said. “It shows crime, violent crime, and murders decreasing in Louisiana by more than the national average and, in fact, in New Orleans for example, the lowest number of murders in 2018 since 1971, and they are on track to be below that.”
With the success of his re-election campaign (Edwards was re-elected Governor on November 16), Gov. Edwards’ words about the importance of voting in the run-off election are even more prescient.
“People sometimes say well I only have one vote, what difference does it make? Well nobody has more than one vote, you have an equal say with anybody else, I don’t care how rich and famous they are, I don’t care where they live. It’s one vote, so it’s as important as everybody else’s,” he said.
